I've played the game twice now, according to the German rules, but my impression is, I got the rules somewhere someplace wrong, since the game seemed too easy.

1st: The ressources.What happens to the ressources spent on the performers, once the show is over?Do they vanish, no matter what? Do they only vanish, when I want to get a bonus? Or do they even keep the ressources assigned to them, no matter what (they have been equipped after all ..)?

2nd: Income.I can sell tickets. That's ok. However the rules say, that I get the according amount of money, when I put a chip on the ticket field and move the cube on. Does that mean, I get the money for EACH field I move the cube across? After all that would be up to 17 coins within 5 phases of preparation - which is quite a lot, regarding that some performers give you money and some save you money.

In the games I played, everyone always had enough coins to pay all the performers from show 1 up to show 3, while the performers remained equipped with their ressources .. so: what did I do wrong?

no1. every performers keep their resources until they are flipped (when they are fully placed) or fired. They keep their cubes no matter what.

no2. 17 is not a lot.. when you hit that 7/8th performer + 2nd assistant, those income will rattle you down unless they are flipped. Especially if you hire a high cost performer (such as the useless cannonballers ).

The thing with big money with a lot of trapeze is you will not score many VPs. You want them flipped as early as possible, especially those 5 VP performer to generate those 15 VPs over 3 shows

#1) The cubes stay in place until you choose to flip a performer and then they go back to the reserves. Unless you're playing with the Drum Roll: Ringmaster expansion, as you may then pick to keep one of the cubes if you have activated that ability of your ringmaster.

#2) The Sell Tickets action is limited to two action discs (or workers) per player and turn, so the highest income you can get in a turn is 9, and 26 per show.

joehn wrote:

Especially if you hire a high cost performer (such as the useless cannonballers ).

They are far from useless. The Cannonball Man might be one of the best performers in the game if you can get him early and pair him up with a Bizarre performer which grants a free salary. If you pull that off prior to the 1st show, you have then hired the Cannonball Man for 6 coins, while he'll give you 21 coins over the course of the game, for a net gain of 15!

Maybe I got the rules wrong but... when u add all the three cubes u let them on the performer until u flip it to gain points? So, just an example, if I equip a performer during the first show, then he'll continue to give me an outstanding performance also on the second and third shows?

Maybe I got the rules wrong but... when u add all the three cubes u let them on the performer until u flip it to gain points? So, just an example, if I equip a performer during the first show, then he'll continue to give me an outstanding performance also on the second and third shows?

I've played the game twice now, according to the German rules, but my impression is, I got the rules somewhere someplace wrong, since the game seemed too easy.

1st: The ressources.What happens to the ressources spent on the performers, once the show is over?Do they vanish, no matter what? Do they only vanish, when I want to get a bonus? Or do they even keep the ressources assigned to them, no matter what (they have been equipped after all ..)?

2nd: Income.I can sell tickets. That's ok. However the rules say, that I get the according amount of money, when I put a chip on the ticket field and move the cube on. Does that mean, I get the money for EACH field I move the cube across? After all that would be up to 17 coins within 5 phases of preparation - which is quite a lot, regarding that some performers give you money and some save you money.

In the games I played, everyone always had enough coins to pay all the performers from show 1 up to show 3, while the performers remained equipped with their ressources .. so: what did I do wrong?

Thanks and kind regards,Kai

Kai, we just played our first session last week and apparently you did nothing wrong, as we were under the same impression. As far as the game being "easy" (more than enough money for everyone keep their performers active till the 3rd show), I don´t see a problem, there is still competition there. The problem we had is that the shows scoring become extremely tedious due to the large amount of combos and resource generation it can lead to. Seems that the show, that apparently should consume some of your resources, ends up generating even more. The preparation for the last round basically becomes a dispute to geting the best performers to be hired, and that is more closely related to luck (who gets to choose which performer to hire first).

I´ve seen in another post someone saying that mistakenly was generating VPs for the flipped performers. That´s just intiuitive, according to the iconography on the cards (yeah, I know, it´s explained in the rules) and also the logic we are used to from other games. You have to balance between generating resources or points. In DR default rules, that just didn´t happen in our game.

In another post, someone was just talking about how unimportant the trailer is, when compared to the large amounts of money that can be generated. A trailer, in best case scenario would save you 3 $, while costing ususlly 1 $ (net $2!!). In the last round, would barely pay for itself. So unless you get the card that scores most trailers it´s just a completely useless mechanic.

It may be because we used the promo performers, so next game we´ll try it without them.

Now I know that all those circus owners from the 1900s died really rich and enjoyng hundreds of outstanding emplyees at their service :)

Is what I've been told at the Essen booth .. however this never happens when I play ..Maybe someone could show me a reliably repeatable scenario, where this happens .. ??

Perhaps the issue is what ideas you may bring to what "balance" means? I tend to agree that the decision whether to generate benefits with a Performer or flipping for Prestige points isn't that tense of a decision. Most of the time it seems a pretty obvious one.

For example, if you have a Cannonball Man improved to the max he barely generates a profit, but he does pay for his keep+1. If you can get a Bizarro who gives him a free salary then the decision is probably a no-brainer to keep him on till third show to generate extra revenue. Even without such a Bizarro combo as long as he is paying for his keep why not keep him on till the third show? The case is if you flip him (which means you miss the cash benefit he'll award) you therefore will have to come up with the high salary cost by some other means. SO there is some other "balance" you're gonna have to strike to produce revenue to pay for him (which stinks given his low PPs given for his cost). That decision may produce some bad tension if you haven't planned for how to pay for that salary because he'll give you a sucker punch to your Prestige if you haven't; but as for good tension how and when to make that decision to flip is generally obvious and isn't generally that tactically satisfying.

Rather than the decision to flip or not I've often found the decision whether to go from a two-star to a three-star performance sometimes involves some decision; the higher benefit isn't always better (though it usually is), especially when you have the Ringmaster expansion in play and you may be more divided on where to appropriate cubes. Not to say those good kind of challenging moments of decision never arise in Drum Roll, but I've found they don't arise nearly as richly and often as I hoped for.

I'll give it a try with performers giving 1 point (when already flipped) per show. That might encourage people to flip them early and create some strategical decision making.

How does the ringmaster expansion helps with this problem? (sorry haven't read the rules yet).

The Ringmasters give you other decision points for where to place up to six cubes to get up to three useful abilities at a modest salary of 1 coin per show. It helps add some decision making during cube acquisition and allocation since the (edit: placement) limit is still 2 cubes (unless one has hired the General Supplier).

(The Ringmaster expansion also includes good Performers; they have the same cost/rewards as the Promo Performers but with greater cube flexibility. Nevertheless they don't fundamentally resolve the tension aspects about which we're talking.)

When I first (mis)understood the rules we played so you could only improve Performers sequentially. I thought it added a better tension than the rules as intended: You can improve performers at any order, but only the lowest, most complete counts for establishing the level of performance i.e., a Perfomer will be fired if at least the first cube isn't in place by show time even if improved in other cube areas.

I really like your idea for a bonus 1 PP per flipped Performer per subsequent show. I have considered a variant allowing you to unflip Performers in a subsequent show for -1 PP, but your idea may be more elegant while providing incentive toward better decision weighing.

I have also been playtesting a leapfrog Ticket Sales mechanism that adds better tactics around how much ticket revenue one may generate per round. I like it better so far than the base rules but wanted to play it a bit more before writing up a variant around it.

The Ringmasters give you other decision points for where to place up to six cubes to get up to three useful abilities at a modest salary of 1 coin per show. It helps add some decision making during cube acquisition and allocation since the (edit: placement) limit is still 2 cubes (unless one has hired the General Supplier).